Express: req.flash() requires sessions

Question

I'm having some problems getting connect-flash to work, the error message I'm getting is:

'Error: req.flash() requires sessions'

I've seen this can be because of the ordering of the app, but I'm not sure if this is the case here.

App.js:

var express = require('express');
var path = require('path');
var favicon = require('serve-favicon');
var logger = require('morgan');
var cookieParser = require('cookie-parser');
var bodyParser = require('body-parser');
var session = require('express-session');
var flash = require('connect-flash');
var passport = require('passport');
var app = express();

app.use(logger('dev'));
app.use(bodyParser.json());
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }));
app.use(cookieParser());
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));

app.use(session({secret: '{secret}', name: 'session_id', saveUninitialized: true, resave: true}));
app.use(passport.initialize());
app.use(passport.session());
app.use(flash());

Routes etc. are below

flash generating code:

passport.authenticate('local', { failureRedirect: '/login', successRedirect: '/', failureFlash: true})

Overcompensation

so, just removing your prefix yields following question here on SO: #19168855 – Viviyan

I've already read that, I don't use session.destroy() anywhere. Any other ideas? – Overcompensation

Passport needs flash to be configured before itself. Try putting app.use(flash()) before passport – Grider

In my case the RedisStore object in the store property of the express-session was wrongly configured (wrong port). – Clericalism

Same here -- didn't have Redis running the background. – Josephina

Answer 1

The issue was with how my view was getting rendered (using req.flash data)

Changing this:

loginShow: function(req, res){
    res.render('login', { message: req.flash });
}

To this:

loginShow: function(req, res){
    res.render('login', { message: req.flash() });
}

Fixed the error and causes connect-flash to act as expected.

Overcompensation

Answer 2

Is your redis-server running? Try

redis-server

This solved the issue for me.

Clericalism